Awesomenauts

The excellent Awesomenauts is free to play until Sunday, and will be available to buy half-price for the duration. Awesomenauts cheerily translates the levelling, lane-pushing and tower bashing of Dotalikes onto a 2D plane and dresses it up as a Saturday morning cartoon punch-up. It feels like Bucky O'Hare has teamed up with Captain Planet to fight the Ninja Turtles, but with more robots and less IP infringement. Read our full verdict in the Awesomenauts review, and download it now via Steam.

Play Awesomenauts for FREE starting now through Sunday at 1PM Pacific Time. You can also pickup Awesomenauts at 50% off the regular price!

Conflict spans the stars as huge robot armies are locked in an enduring stalemate. As the Awesomenauts, you must tip the balance to gain an advantage. Head out to the battlefields with your friends in this 3-on-3 action platformer.

If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play Awesomenauts. If you don't have Steam, you can download it here.

Who needs practical body armor anyway when you're carrying a retractable sniper cannon? You might as well dress up and look fabulous as you lay down a hail of sniper fire upon your enemies! The new Ravishing Raelynn Skin is Now Available for Awesomenauts!

After many feasts following many raids, Skølldir The Terrible Space Viking's nickname was altered to Skølldir The Terribly Overweight Space Viking. Nothing could scorn the brute more than this honorless title! Anyone who would dare to call him fat is met with a rapid series of crushing punches and is thrown aside.

Abilities:- Earthquake- Buttstamp the ground to start an eartquake which damages enemies in front of you in a line.- Mighty throw - Hurl your enemies backwards with this mighty throw.- Bash - Skølldir bashes his enemies to bits with a devastating 3 hit combo.- Explosive fart! - Jump and fart in mid-air to receive an extra boost!

General fixes: Major fixes- The ranking system has received a major overhaul:- Your increase or decrease in rank after a match is now scaled by how long youve been a part of the match. If you join a match that has already been in progress for a long time, your change in rank will be relatively small.- When calculating your new rank at the end of a match, the skill of all players that have ever participated in that match will be taken into account. Previously, the skill of people that have left before the end of a match were not a part of the calculation.- The penalty for leaving a match is now equal to a loss of that match. Even if you unplug your PC and / or network cable, the leave penalty will still be applied. The loss in rank will not be scaled by how long youve been a part of the match, so it will always be preferable to play until the (bitter) end. - Split screen players used to count as if they had the same skill as bots, but now they will count as having the same skill as the main player. This fixes the major leaps in rank that split-screen players used to get.- Because of all these big changes, the leaderboard and rankings of all players will be reset. Games played, win percentage and other leaderboard stats will not be reset.- With all these changes there comes the risk of introducing new bugs into the ranking system, even though we have tested the new system extensively. If any major bugs are found we may reset the leaderboard again in a future patch.

General Fixes: Minor fixes- Added extra platform near the base on AI Station 404, placed same platforms in Ribbit IV- Improved crit chance calculation for various skills. Limiting the chance of multiple crits in a row and long streaks of non-crits.- Fixed hiding of certain skills by shortly tapping the teleport to base button.- On accepting a game invite the invitee will be placed in the team of the player that sent the invite if there is a free slot in that team.

- Added an option to limit the matchmaking search area based on geographical location. There are 4 different settings:RegionalSame or nearby region (Recommended)Half way around the globeWorldwide- All characters will now issue one of several unique taunts when achieving a killing spree.

Character balance/fixes

Coco Nebulon- Killing opponents with the effect of Super Conductor (Electrify) will now display the correct skill icon in the.

Sheriff Lonestar- The position of Dark Matter Flashbang (Throw Grenade) and Rubber Sleeves (Throw Grenade) in the loadout screen has been switched.- The size of the explosion effect from, Bull Charger (Hyper Bull) has been reduced by 20%.- The price of Hyper Bull has been increased from 120 Solar to 135 Solar.

Gnaw- The price of Spike Slime (Acid Spit) has been reduced from 290 Solar to 250 Solar.- The price of Rotten Teeth (Bite) has been increased from 260 Solar to 290 Solar.

Derpl Zork- The weight of Derpl has been increased. Derpl is now able to push other characters with more force and can no longer be pushed away by others.- Damage from Solid Fist Bullets (Siege Mode) is now consistent with regular bullets and damage upgrades will now applied correctly.- The price of Siege Mode has been reduced from 145 Solar to 135 Solar.- The price of Solid Fist Bullets has been increased from 135 Solar to 225 Solar.

Voltar- The added health from Energy Drink (Healbot) has been decreased from 20 to 10 per stage.- The price of Energy Drink (Healbot) has been increased from 170 Solar to 205 Solar.- The attack speed of Turret Add-on (Healbot) has been decreased from 240 to 200.- The tooltip of Turret Add-on (Healbot) will now display attack speed.- The visual effect of Turret Add-on (Healbot) has been improved.- The price of Turret Add-on (Healbot) has been increased from 190 Solar to 230 Solar.- The price of Hydraulic Sugar Dispenser (Healbot) has been increased from 140 Solar to 170 Solar.- The price of Cortex Tank has (Healbot) has been increased from 140 Solar to 175 Solar.

Clunk- The price of Vacuum Bite has been reduced from 155 Solar to 135 Solar.

General fixes: Major fixes-Improved skill-based matchmaking by splitting all players into nine evenly-sized divisions based on their skill-level. The game will connect you to games from your own division as well as those one below and one above your level. If you are in the bottom division you will be able to join games 2 divisions up and if you are in the top then you will be connected to 2 divisions down. We are still making improvements to this system, and you will this feature being integrated further into the menus in future updates.

General Fixes: Minor fixes- The behaviour of the flying droids on AI Station 404 has been improved.- Added several platforms on AI Station 404.

Conflict spans the stars as huge robot armies are locked in an enduring stalemate. As the Awesomenauts, you must tip the balance to gain an advantage. Head out to the battlefields with your friends in this 3-on-3 action platformer.

Two cheery teams of three attempt to kill each other while slowly chipping away at the other team’s turrets. If you aren’t familiar with action-RTS games, Awesomenauts’ simple side-scrolling approach is a fantastic place to pick up the basics. Smash the other team’s defences to bits, then destroy their core so that you can win the game.

The first thing you need to know is that it isn’t safe to attack turrets without the help of your team’s tiny robots. These droid helpers march across the map in pairs, and gain a major health boost when close to enemy turrets. Stand behind these bite-sized soldiers and you’ll be able to attack turrets without getting hurt, but you’ll usually have to protect the droids if you want them to get that far.

Killing turrets, players, and enemy droids earns you solar – the currency you’ll spend to buy upgrades for your character throughout the game. Gradually overpower the enemy team, and eventually you’re more than likely to win. There are eight different characters to play as, but Ronimo tease that there’ll be more to choose from soon. Initially you’ll have to choose from the standard upgrades, but as you level up in the game each character will gain access to a choice of 24.

You can only choose 12 upgrades to take into a game, and it’s very unlikely you’ll get the chance to max all of them out. Creating a tactical build order is an important part of winning the game, but in contrast with more complicated action-RTS games, roles in Awesomenauts are very fluid. Clunk is a tank and Voltar heals, but most other characters can serve more than one purpose.

The variety of skills ensures it never feels like there’s one ‘correct’ character build. None of them are so weak alone that they need support classes in order to survive, but teams of three friends who play together have got plenty of scope for making tactical builds. There’s depth here for those who want it, but on the surface Awesomenauts is relatively easy to pick up and play.

The inclusion of keyboard and mouse controls in the PC version have forced a few substantial changes to the game, though. The Xbox 360 version only supported eight-direction aiming, while mouse support upgrades this to 360 degrees.

This massive advantage to ranged characters meant that a lot of the game needed to be rebalanced, and at this stage it doesn’t feel like it’s quite there. Playing with a controller still remains an option, but puts you at a big disadvantage: moving and aiming are mapped to one stick, which naturally takes away a lot of control. The other problem is the AI that replaces human players who drop out during a game. Erratic, dim, and yet often still hard to beat, the AI isn’t much fun to play against.

To compensate for their lack of tactics, these AI chumps seem to automatically gain solar at a rate that’s almost impossible to keep up with – a cheap balancing trick that’s overtly unfair. When you’re playing against humans it isn’t a problem, but this isn’t reassuring for new players. It’s a hell of a lot less complicated than other MOBA games, but many are likely to be turned off after a few practise games against the evil AI.

Adding a new control scheme changes the game in unexpected ways, and Ronimo still has work to do if they want to stand out from the crowd. It’s charming, addictive, and on the verge of being a genuine classic – a gateway drug and an ideal introduction to the burgeoning action-RTS genre. But as things stand, it isn’t quite awesome.

General fixes: major fixes - fixed a crash when switching control scheme while a popup is being opened or closed - achievement Masters Of The Universe has been fixed - fixed that only one wireless Xbox controller was usable at once - fixed that non-Xbox controllers that output as XInput were read double, causing one controller to control two splitscreen players (for example Logitech F310) - music now mutes when the game window does not have focus (on alt+tab, for example) - instead of crashing, game now shows a message if videocard drivers are grossly out of date

General fixes: minor fixes - fixed that some network packages were lost before sending. This is probably only a minor networking improvement - number of Solar Bosses killed is now tracked in the stats screen - descriptions for the "Hawk Wolf Puma Bear" fixed in Spanish, French - fixed that second bottom turret in Ribbit IV could sometimes be attacked from the back without returning fire - window now minimizes when browser links in main menu are clicked - improved menu controls with some control schemes in some specific places - removed mute button from scorescreen and controls scheme configuration screen (button didnt do anything) - various other minor fixes to functionality and texts

Topics that didnt make it into this patch and that we are working on: - new character Gnaw will come soon! - some players get excessive lag or too many network errors. Less than 0.1% of players cannot enter an online match at all. We are working on this. - we are still looking for a fix for some players with various Nvidia cards who can only run on Low graphics quality, or not at all. - a couple of players with specific Asus laptops cannot start the game at all. We are still looking for a fix for this. - some users claim that there are bugs in the Rankings calculations, so we have added additional logging to be able to research that. If you see things like that you win and then see your ranking decrease, then send us a log plus extensive description of what happened, so that we can check what is going on. - besides new characters and various fixes, we are working on something Really Cool And New (tm). We will not yet tell you what that is. Muhaha!

Conflict spans the stars as huge robot armies are locked in an enduring stalemate. As the Awesomenauts, you must tip the balance to gain an advantage. Head out to the battlefields with your friends in this 3-on-3 action platformer.

Plus, pick up the game before September 5th and receive 3 Awesomenaut-inspired items to use in Team Fortress 2. These items will be available in the upcoming days. Pick up the 3-pack to play with your friends.